The illegality of such calls dates to the times when consumers paid by the minute in making cellular phone calls, Nelson said. Because of that, most of those calls are to landlines, he added. Some scam callers are able to extract fees from unwitting consumers. Nelson noted the most common type of call is one that ends up selling the lead to a legitimate, albeit shady, service provider.
“This is the most common type of call, the vast majority of what we’re seeing here,” he said. By and large, homeowners receiving such calls will be connected to a service provider – someone to help refinance a home, for instance, Nelson added. But that alone should be a red flag: “Why would you want to deal with a company that buys such unscrupulous leads?” he asked rhetorically. “Bear in mind, they might be offering a real service. But keep these things in mind: One, you’re not in control. You didn’t ask for this, you have no power here and have done no research. The types of companies that would generate leads like this are not high-tier companies. So out of the gate, you’ll get companies that are not afraid of breaking the law.”
With the breakneck speed of interest rate hikes, escalating prices, market slowdown, inflation and other factors, consumers often feel the current climate dizzying, Nelson suggested. This state of mind makes them more vulnerable to falling for such scams, he added. Better alternatives: “Call your lender, do research, ask your friends,” he urged.
Spam and fraud frequency is growing in general, according to Hiya research. Last year, 10% of all 243.5 billion calls processed by Hiya were flagged as spam and fraud. In terms of targeting those with mortgages, Nelson pointed to the ease of finding call recipients by culling to all manner of public records. “They do try to do some amount of targeting,” he said of scam artists. “One of the easiest ones is public demographic data, and they tend to target people of a particular background and income. A lot of them will have bought public domain data.”
Easily accessible data includes credit scores, lending history and school records. In the aggregate, such data points imbue the scammer with a sheen of authority in being able to invoke the personal statistics with ease. “They can drop that in to sound legitimate,” Nelson said. This is when those being called are made more vulnerable, he added.
